


Pecan Pie

by mystery_deer



Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-22
Updated: 2018-12-22
Packaged: 2019-09-24 23:01:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,453
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17109812
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mystery_deer/pseuds/mystery_deer
Summary: Kevin and Raymond visit Kevin's parents for thanksgiving after the pie incident





	1. Arrival

“Maybe they just want to try again.”  
“Unlikely.”  
“If you’re so sure of it we can go back-”  
“No, Raymond we can’t just leave. You want me to just leave after years of silence? Just abandon any hope of reconciliation?” 

They lapsed into silence, Raymond drumming his fingers on the wheel as they waited, parked, for something. Kevin exhaled (he did not sigh) and leaned against him.

“I’m sorry, you’re just trying to help and I attack you. Thank you for coming.”  
“I wouldn’t let you come alone.”  
“I wouldn’t go alone.” They held hands, squeezed.  
.  
.  
Dear Kevin,  
We’d like to invite you to Thanksgiving this year  
It’d be wonderful to see you again.  
\- Mom and Dad

Kevin had stood in the foyer for half an hour with Cheddar pacing nervously around him as he read and reread the very short letter. No explanation as to why now, did the intentionally leave out Raymond or was it implied that he was welcome? Why didn’t they text him or call or (They don’t have your number, it’s been changed at least three times since the last time you spoke since that last goodbye) give him anything more than three sentences? Just three sentences after years, three planks of rotten green wood that he was trusting to carry him and Raymond over the chasm that’d grown between them in the silence.  
He showed the letter to Raymond when he arrived home, hoping that he’d know what to do or have an opinion. Hoping that he tear the letter to shreds and forbidden them from going, call his parents Jackals and leave it at that. Hoping that he hug him with joy radiating from every inch and smile, exclaim that this was fantastic news! That they’d finally be a whole family again (We are a whole family. We are ALREADY a whole family with or without you-) But he did neither of those things. He read the letter and then set it aside carefully, looking to Kevin for guidance. 

“Are you going to go?”  
“I don’t know.” And then he fell into his husband’s arms.  
.  
.  
“They would have said something.”  
Kevin could see it now, his parents greeting them at the door and them pulling him aside so Raymond was left alone and vulnerable in their drab sitting room. ‘You used to have such good taste…’ his mother would whisper softly, almost enough to trick him into thinking she cared. That she was being kind.  
‘I bet that HE picked it out, OUR Kevin has better sense than this.’ his father would growl and wrap his arms around Mother, comforting her as she turned away from him turned away again again again again  
.  
.  
“Kevin.”  
They were outside of his childhood home now, they hadn’t moved. He wished they had. It felt like he was intruding, like he was trampling on sacred ground.  
“We can always go back.”  
“No, I’m alright.”  
A moment.  
Two.  
“I’m alright can you just- just please hold this for me?”  
“Of course.”  
He handed Raymond the store bought pumpkin pie they’d picked up at a nearby bakery. They were about to pass it but Raymond had insisted they stop, not wanting to arrive unwanted and empty handed. 

He rang the doorbell.


	2. Dinner

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kevin's parents give him an apology and a second chance

“Kevin!” He was enveloped in the familiar smell of his mother’s perfume, near overwhelmingly flowery to the point of causing a headache when he was tired. Memories lapped at his heels, him tucked into his mother’s side as she watched Tv or read to him, him pretending to be asleep so that she wouldn’t get up. To have just five more minutes of patience. 

“Kevin so good to see you again!”   
“Kevin so good to see you again!” A different time and place and yet his anxiety was the same, his heart was in his neck. Raymond hung back and Kevin retreated back into him in a way unsettlingly similar to his mother. Boxers going back to their corners of the ring. Melodrama.

“It’s been awhile.” As if they were separated only by a few months. “This is Raymond, you remember him.”

“Yes we do, hello Raymond.”  
“NO SON OF OURS IS GOING TO RUN OFF WITH SOME-”  
“Hello Raymond.”  
“Hello Mr and Mrs. Cozner.”

Kevin remembered Raymond’s mother’s soft smile and firm handshake and her “Please, call me Laverne.” Here there was only a stiff nod and a silence leaning towards rigamortis. 

“We brought pie!” Raymond suddenly exclaimed, hands outstretched in offering. Kevin’s mother examined the box a touch too long before accepting it.

“We already have a pie.” His father remarked. Kevin opened his mouth but his mother interrupted.  
“We’ll have two now, we’ll have...two.” She pat her husband’s hand and Kevin realized with horror that he was going to apologize. He could feel the words on the tip of his tongue. He wanted to hold Raymond’s hand, instead he smiled and walked further into the house so he wouldn’t feel like he was trying to get past two elderly bouncers.

“Is anyone else coming?”  
“Well Martin’s out of town, some conference or another.”  
“He hasn’t been around much lately, we think he may have a special someone!” His mother smiled at him for a brief moment and he smiled back. He remembered being young and fascinated with her. He’d sit at the kitchen table and watch her cook, listen to her feed him scraps of gossip between tiny taste testings and he’d feel grown up, in the know. He felt like they had their own little world in those moments.

“So how have you been Raymond?” His father asked begrudgingly, not one for even pleasant silences. At the reminder of the company Kevin’s smile was now met with a grimace before his mother had run off to the kitchen. Kevin didn’t follow her, he felt cold despite the heater being on.

“I’ve been good, ups and downs but keeping my head above water.”  
“That’s fine that’s fine...Dinner will be ready soon, you eat meat?”  
“Yes.”  
“Right, of course. She’s a fine cook let me tell you-”  
As his father continued to drone on Kevin sat beside Raymond on the couch. A Charlie Brown special ran muted on the television. When they thought no one was looking they touched each other’s fingertips and Kevin hated it. Hated how frightened he was. 

Dinner was ready in half an hour.  
.  
.  
.  
They ate in heavy silence struggling desperately to be light. Occasionally someone would attempt to jumpstart a conversation but ultimately these attempts led nowhere. 

“So Mrs. Cozner your husband tells me you like to cook?”  
“Oh...yes.” Sensing this was where the conversation would fizzle out if it wasn’t fanned Kevin added,  
“I used to watch her when I was young, remember Mother? I would even help you sometimes.”  
“Yes I..I remember.” 

Then she began to cry. Delicate weeping that led to all new memories coming back of hiding behind doors in unlit hallways listening to arguments, to questions.   
Whyishelikethiswhyishelikethiswhyishelikethis  
“It’s my fault isn’t it? Because I babied you too much, if I had just…”  
“Mother...”  
“Hon you can’t blame yourself.”  
“Exactly, Dad Ag-”  
“I should have been there more. You only babied him because I was working all the time, never taught him how to...it messed him up. Messed you up, I’m so sorry Kevin.” 

Kevin stood, pushing his chair back so fast that it toppled over dramatically. Raymond startled.   
“Why did you even ask me back?”   
“We wanted to apologize.”  
“For me being gay?”  
“Oh Kevin…”  
“Mother, stop! I’m gay. I’m a gay man and there’s no need for anyone to apologize for it. I knew this was a mistake. Raymond, let’s go.” 

He and Raymond moved towards the door and were almost out when his mother grabbed his arm, his nails digging into his skin.   
“It’s never too late Baby! It’s not too late you can still leave him, you can still live a a a normal life. Like your brother or-” He shook her arm off, rage welling up in him. All the fear churning in his stomach morphing into red hot anger. At her at himself, at everything. 

“You’re wrong.” He raised his voice, “YOU’RE BOTH WRONG!” Everyone paused, still, forming a tableau. His father standing at the head of the table, his mother recoiling and Raymond with one hand on the door knob, all looking towards him. “It is too late. YEARS too late. You could have reached out to me years ago, could have supported me, we could have been a family then but no. You would rather hate me-”  
“We don’t hate you-”  
“Yes you do. You pretend you don’t but you. You loathe me. You think I’m a monster, that I need fixing. You’ve never given Raymond a chance, you just use him to rationalize your hatred. He is a kind man, he’s smart and funny and he makes me so happy. He’s my husband, both of you! If you claim to love me you have to love him too, him too!”

Kevin pulled on his jacket hastily, feeling his eyes begin to burn, the water was rising up beyond his lips, memories. Him and his father laughing over some game show on the television, his mother helping him with homework, crawling into bed with them on stormy nights and feeling safe as they held him and assured him it was just nature. “The storm will pass.” They’d whisper.   
He remembered when he was in middle school and he’d run home crying so hard he couldn’t see straight because he’d realized to his horror that he had a crush on the boy everyone hated in math class because he corrected the teacher, the boy who sat beside him at lunch that day and offered to share his sugar cookies. He remembered collapsing on the couch and being comforted by his mother, the same woman who now looked at him with a wild fear, as if he were a lunatic, an intruder in her home.   
.  
.  
.  
“Mom I feel like I’m bad, I feel like I’m the worst person in the world”  
“Did you do something? Did something happen at school today?”  
“No! No! I just feel bad. I didn’t do anything I just feel wrong.”  
“Oh Kevin…nothing could ever make me stop loving you.”  
“You promise?”  
“I promise. That’s a mother’s love.”  
.  
.  
.  
Kevin opened his eyes on the street facing their car. He followed Raymond inside and shut the doors, leaned against the cold window and shivered with adrenaline.   
“Kevin.”  
He wheezed, bringing his hand to his mouth as if to keep something back.  
“Kevin?”  
He sobbed, violently contorting his body until he was curled up on himself, feet on the car seat and fingers clawing at his head.  
“Kevin!”  
The door on his side opened and Raymond was holding him, murmuring placations. 

“It’s going to be the last time I see them isn’t it?” Kevin wailed, his voice ringing through the abandoned streets. He wished he was dead.   
He didn’t even have enough memories to drown in.


	3. Opus 106

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Back home Kevin and Raymond try to salvage their night

The moment they arrived home Kevin went to the globe and poured himself a drink, then three. He forced himself to stop, getting drunk wouldn’t solve the problem. (What was the problem?)  
“I don’t even know why I’m so upset.”  
“They are your parents.”  
“They essentially abandoned me for years only to get my hopes up for a fraction of a day in order to abandon me yet again.”  
“You cannot help that you love them.”  
“Then why do they hate me? Why can I not help loving them but they- they can just toss me away? Just declare me a lost cause? What gives them the right?” He sank into their couch and they held each other for a minute before Raymond suddenly stood. 

“Raymond?”  
“Hold on a moment Dear.” Kevin smiled fleetingly at the pet name and waited while his husband searched their home for something. He tried to remember what the last thing he’d said to his parents was, what they’d said to him but drew a blank. All he could remember was his anger. 

“A detective on my squad has suffered similar issues with parents-”  
“Was it Peralta?”  
“Surprisingly no. I don’t want to compromise this person’s privacy but as I said they were going through something similar. They came out to their parents and they were...not very accepting. They’re lucky in that it seems they might be able to-”  
“No offense Raymond but I don’t feel like hearing about someone’s else’s luck. I want to wallow in alcohol and my own misery.”

“Well, my point is that we all banded together and now they have a new sense of family.”  
“I know that I’m not alone, that’s not the problem. I just...I’m angry with myself. I didn’t just come out, I came out years ago. I’ve built an entire life without them and yet their rejection hurts somehow even more now than it did back then.”

Raymond watched his husband for a moment before going over to the record player they kept in the living room. It was old, they’d bought it at a thrift store when they were young during a period of whimsy and had taken good care of it. He played one of the record’s he’d dug up.  
“We create our own traditions Professor.” He swayed to the rhythm of Brahm’s Funf Gesange, closing his eyes. “Join me?”

Kevin got up from the couch and half-danced with his husband, the two of them leaning on each other and swaying around the room more than committing to any particular dance.  
“I love you Kevin. You are not a stupid man, it is not stupid to love and miss your family. I just wanted to tell you that I’m here.” Out in the kitchen somewhere the couple hears Cheddar begin to bark. “Cheddar is here.” They laugh. “You have many friends, your life is no worse off because your parents are not in it. Everything is the same as it's always been and things will get back to normal.”  
“I know that.”  
“I know you do.” He kissed Kevin’s cheek and smiled at his laughter.  
“Thank you Dear.”  
“I deserve no thanks.” 

They danced until their stomachs growled and then they started their own dinner, letting the music carry them through cooking.  
Once the table was set for two they ate in a comfortable quiet, conversation popping up like fireworks every now and then, celebrated and exciting. They snickered about Kevin’s mother’s cooking and his father’s long droning stories and Raymond told stories about mishaps in childhood that Kevin countered with his own.  
Neither of them noticed when the record ran out.


End file.
